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It was announced today that Sky, which is owned by Comcast, will be acquiring Britan's ITV for $2.1 Billion.
ITV 4 currently airs AEW programming and it would be expected that the library for World of Sport would be included in the sale.
World of Sport was a sports anthology series that ran for 20 years on ITV and regularly featured pro wrestling personalities and matches from Europe. When the decision was made in 1985 to cancel the series, it crippled homegrown pro wrestling in that region for many years, setting the stage for the then-WWF's already growing popularity in the region to flourish.
WWE had, over several years, opened communications with ITV with the idea of purchasing their pro wrestling-related material from the original ITV World of Sport library for their own use, without success.
In 2013, John Chapman licensed and filmed a World of Sport TV pilot that ITV opted not to pick up. The online attention to that pilot led to WWE reaching out to ITV in 2014 to open communications about purchasing the library. The acquisition never went down, but those two events may have started the process of ITV opting to launch their own pilot, which aired on New Year's Eve 2016, featuring Grado, Viper, Dave Mastiff, Mark and Joe Coffey, Kenny Williams, and Zack Gibson among others.
WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross was brought in as lead announcer and worked as a producer for the pilot. The pilot airing did well, leading to a March 2017 announcement that ITV was bringing back World of Sport for a ten episode first season. with Tom McLennan and Simon Marsh announced as Executive Producers.
TNA/Impact Wrestling got involved with the project as this point with Jeff Jarrett, then the Chief Creative Officer of the company, effectively replacing Jim Ross. Tapings were announced for May 2017 at Preston Guild Hall and went on sale. The plan was for the series to debut in July 2017 on ITV with Impact parent company Anthem attempting to syndicate the series in other countries, but it was not to be. The tapings were canceled just a few weeks before they were set to take place with the idea that the project was being postponed, although the feeling among talents who were contracted for the series was that the project was dead. Impact sources at the time claimed there were logistical issues with the tapings, although stories that were floated by wrestlers who were contracted instead placed the blame at least partially on Jarrett pushing for the network to drop the idea of a 10 episode series, instead running a traditional, ongoing series.
The announcement of plans for the original tapings led to World Wrestling Entertainment rushing forward with plans for their own UK brand, placing a number of talents under contract. After holding several events to crown their first UK champion, WWE utilized the NXT brand to showcase the UK talents while seeking a potential TV deal with a number of UK broadcasters under the "King of the Ring" title, including ITV.
WWE held several other events under the WWE UK Championship banner before announcing the launch of NXT UK, which was shuttered in advance of a planned NXT Europe launch in 2023 that as of this year, has still yet to happen.
ITV previously registered trademarks for for WOS Wrestling, WOS, World of Sport as well as the Classic World of Sport logo in Great Britain as well as the trademark for WOS Wrestling in the United States. The trademarks were originally registered in 2012 by John Chapman's company as ITV did not originally own the rights when Chapman filmed his pilot. After ITV declined the air the pilot in 2013, they opted to purchase the trademarks from Chapman.
The revived WOS series finally ran for 10 episodes from June to September 2018 with Will Ospreay, Davey Boy Smith Jr., Grado, Kay Le Ray, Viper, Joe Hendry, Jinny, Doug Williams and more appearing. Another revival was announced for 2024 but never went forward.
It should be interesting to see whether today's announcement has a ripple effect that leads to the WOS library being utilized for streaming purposes or eventually sold to another entity once the ITV sale goes through.
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